No More Learning

To me it is so much so that at the close of
each meal I carefully eat whatever crumbs may be left on my tin plate, or
have fallen on the rough towel that one uses as a cloth so as not to soil
one's table; and I do so not from hunger--I get now quite sufficient
food--but simply in order that nothing should be wasted of what is given
to me. So one should look on love.

Christ, like all fascinating personalities, had the power of not merely
saying beautiful things himself, but of making other people say beautiful
things to him; and I love the story St. Mark tells us about the Greek
woman, who, when as a trial of her faith he said to her that he could not
give her the bread of the children of Israel, answered him that the
little dogs--([Greek text], 'little dogs' it should be rendered)--who are
under the table eat of the crumbs that the children let fall. Most
people live for love and admiration. But it is by love and admiration
that we should live. If any love is shown us we should recognise that we
are quite unworthy of it. Nobody is worthy to be loved. The fact that
God loves man shows us that in the divine order of ideal things it is
written that eternal love is to be given to what is eternally unworthy.
Or if that phrase seems to be a bitter one to bear, let us say that every
one is worthy of love, except him who thinks that he is. Love is a
sacrament that should be taken kneeling, and _Domine, non sum dignus_
should be on the lips and in the hearts of those who receive it.

If ever I write again, in the sense of producing artistic work, there are
just two subjects on which and through which I desire to express myself:
one is 'Christ as the precursor of the romantic movement in life': the
other is 'The artistic life considered in its relation to conduct. ' The
first is, of course, intensely fascinating, for I see in Christ not
merely the essentials of the supreme romantic type, but all the
accidents, the wilfulnesses even, of the romantic temperament also. He
was the first person who ever said to people that they should live
'flower-like lives. ' He fixed the phrase.
He took children as the type
of what people should try to become. He held them up as examples to
their elders, which I myself have always thought the chief use of
children, if what is perfect should have a use. Dante describes the soul
of a man as coming from the hand of God 'weeping and laughing like a
little child,' and Christ also saw that the soul of each one should be _a
guisa di fanciulla che piangendo e ridendo pargoleggia_. He felt that
life was changeful, fluid, active, and that to allow it to be stereotyped
into any form was death. He saw that people should not be too serious
over material, common interests: that to be unpractical was to be a great
thing: that one should not bother too much over affairs. The birds
didn't, why should man? He is charming when he says, 'Take no thought
for the morrow; is not the soul more than meat? is not the body more than
raiment? ' A Greek might have used the latter phrase. It is full of
Greek feeling. But only Christ could have said both, and so summed up
life perfectly for us.

His morality is all sympathy, just what morality should be. If the only
thing that he ever said had been, 'Her sins are forgiven her because she
loved much,' it would have been worth while dying to have said it. His
justice is all poetical justice, exactly what justice should be. The
beggar goes to heaven because he has been unhappy. I cannot conceive a
better reason for his being sent there.